Three Day Stubble's 25th Anniversary

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Pioneering nerd rock band Three Day Stubble is celebrating their 25th anniversary with a rare show tomorrow night at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill. The band is profiled in the latest issue of the SF Weekly:

The term "nerd rock" has been associated with bands like Weezer and, more recently, the dreaded emo genre. But way back in 1980, before most of those emaciated, dyed-black crybabies were even born, a group called Three Day Stubble dubbed itself "nerd rock," and to this day has stayed true to that spirit. Stumbling straight outta Houston, the musicians of Three Day Stubble did everything back-assward: They wore polyester shirts and hot pants after 1975; boisterous singer Donald the Nut performed in platform shoes and shellacked his hair into a curl on his forehead (way before Salt 'n' Pepa), and his voice veered between Tiny Tim and a constipated Robert Goulet; they had songs about bodily fluids and poop and monsters; they had names like Mr. Hungry and Murderer Bob; and they practiced "Avi," a type of free-form performance art that incorporates spastic movements and ungodly vocal sounds.

"In a traditional Avi setting people will take turns entertaining each other by switching roles between performer and audience," says band (and spiritual) leader Donald the Nut from his current home in Japan. "Occasionally everyone starts doing Avi and the audience disappears. This is called Ménage Avi..."

Throughout the '80s, various members of the band relocated to San Francisco. Toward the end of the decade, Donald began appearing on The Gong Show to perform Avi. The band's documentary, Rubbin' and Wigglin' for You, documents his immediate gonging by Mr. T; the gilded one's distaste for Donald's antics was much like the Ogre's in Revenge of the Nerds.

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